[lgbsneak] found a good source of pre-amps to fill his needs. Some older receivers, like his old Kenwood KA-305 have modular pre-amps. So it’s just a matter of ripping out, powering it up and tossing it into an enclosure. Now he’s got a handy 9v battery powered pre-amp for field work.
11 thoughts on “Preamp Recycling”
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gotta love old equipment :)
Good use of technology, but you’d be surprised what some of those vintage receivers are worth, even if they are non-functional. I couldn’t tell exactly from the pic, but the receiver in the article looks to be early 80s or 70s vintage, I’ve seen those fetch $100+ even if they’re dead, and my Marantz 2275 is worth $400+ on ebay…
Am I the only one that notices the spelling mistake in the post? “recyceing” which is missing an “l” and has an extra “y”?!?
Anyway, this is a pretty cool hack, if basic, but most amps don’t have separate circuit boards for the preamps, although most have a separate one for the PSU…
fan-freaking-tastic!
More of this stuff!
i don’t know why, but there is something very cool and satisfying about pulling a ‘borg’ and successfully removing a component or sub-assembly for use in another project. (sub-assemblies = bigger buzz)
you will add it’s distinctiveness to your own
After I did that, I pulled a headphone amp out of a broken 5 disk cd changer. I haven’t hooked it up yet, but this one even has the 12v + and – and the R and L leads marked.
I’m I the only one wondering what the altiods box is for? Minty for the win!
Altoids container = enclosure? Others keep their “stash” in there (you know, spare jumper clips, case-screws, etc.).
@7: the socket on the wire coming out of it looks like a “wall-wart” style power connector- maybe he has a minty 9v regulator for supplying power. actually, that’s not a bad idea… or it could just be lying on his power wire, or be deliberately placed in the shot to boost his hacker credentials :) “I quickly mounted it in an old Verbatim floppy box”- good man!
nice hack, presumably nicer if you have old amplifiers spare that you don’t mind stealing organs from. now I wish i’d seen this before filming an entire film with the mike boom tethered to the camera mike port by about 2 metres of crappy audio cable.
That’s just a usb charger, I think I was using it as a weight to keep the wall wart plug on my desk. The wall wart was supplying about 19v, according to my multimeter. The datasheet said 22.5v, but it’s been working fine with a 9v battery, so that’s what I’ve gone with.
i actually did something similar using an old pair of computer multimedia speakers. was very simple to just pull out the amp, and solder on a couple new audio and battery connectors.
with decent multimedia speakers selling for $5 at a local used computer store, its a good deal…
Solemn article. It make me lost in thoughts.